Tags: ueno

As unlikely as it may sound, the Andersen restaurant and bakery chain is a 100% Japanese company…
The story begins in 1959, when Shunsuke Takaki, the owner of a bakery from Hiroshima, took a trip to Denmark, where he learned to make Danish pastries and “European style” bread. Later in 1967, he opened in Hiroshima a restaurant and bakery called “Andersen", after the name of the… famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.

The passion for Denmark remained in the Takaki family and in 1981, they opened two bakeries right in Copenhagen, one of them in Tivoli Gardens. And more recently, Seiichi Takaki, the president of Andersen Institute of Bread & Life, donated 200 Japanese cherry trees to the city of Copenhagen, cherry trees which were planted in the Langelinie park.

And now I must confess that I like pastries very much and in Japan I tried all the bakeries I could find! And after all these years, Andersen is still my favorite. So, here’s a photo of the Andersen restaurant I frequented the most, the one from the Ueno Station: